Sunday, November 27, 2016

“Grant your faithful the
resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming, so
that, gathered at his right hand, they may be worthy to possess the heavenly
kingdom” (Collect).

The 1st Sunday of Advent
always draws our attention to the 2d coming of Christ, continuing the focus of
the 33d Sunday of OT and the feast of Christ the King.Advent’s attention will gradually shift to
preparing to celebrate Christ’s birth in time 2,000 years ago; yet we know that
birth is an unrepeatable historical event.And we know that this same Jesus Christ has promised to return, to come
again, to complete the work of our salvation that he began with his
incarnation.

Today’s Collect is loaded
with meaning.As usual, we need time and
attention to unpack that meaning, to understand what we’re praying, to enter
our prayer more deeply.

The Collect—like all the
collects of the Roman Missal—is a humble petition addressed to the Divine
Majesty.This is brought out much more
forcefully in the new translation we’ve been using for 5 years:“grant, we pray….”We don’t demand of God but plead with
him.We sinners aren’t in a position to
demand, no matter how faith-filled we may be, no matter how confident we may be
in the Father’s amazing grace.

Our prayer this morning is
for “resolve to run forth to meet your Christ.”As you know, Christ isn’t
Jesus of Nazareth’s last name but a title:the Greek translation of Messiah,
“anointed one.”Those who were anointed
were designated for some special purpose by God, mainly kings and priests in
the OT, and in the later OT period, the one expected to liberate God’s people
from all their oppressors, the Son of David.We affirm that Jesus of Nazareth is that Anointed One of God.

We pray for
“resolve.”That word implies a strong
will, perseverance, determination.For,
assuredly, there are many things to distract us from attending to our Christian
discipleship, from thinking about Christ’s coming and the 4 last things, from
considering our ultimate destiny.Our
sins may discourage us from thinking about all that or from wanting to meet
Christ—meeting him on the Last Day or perhaps meeting him on this day, Nov. 27.So we need resolve—as a gift from God—to get
ready for death, judgment, and eternity (either heaven or hell).

But we’re praying for more
than a steely determination; more than a British stiff upper lip, as we prepare
for Jesus.We pray that we might “run
forth to meet your Christ.”Picture a
child running to meet Mom or Dad coming home from work, or a spouse charging
into the arms of a returning soldier.What emotions are there?We hope,
we pray, that we might look for, desire, be eager for Christ’s return in such a
way.

To welcome Christ like
that, we need to have “righteous deeds.”How many parables warn us not to come to him empty-handed!—e.g., the
parable of the talents (Matt 25:14-30; cf. Luke 19:12-27), the parable of the
wise and foolish virgins (Matt 25:1-13), the parable of the last judgment (Matt
25:31-46), to which our prayer alludes explicitly.St. Paul exhorts us to “throw off the works
of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Rom 13:12), to rid ourselves of
vices of the flesh and the spirit (13:13) that are just as rife and just as
culturally acceptable today as in the 1st century, and just as much works of
darkness and not of light, and to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (13:14), who
is the light of the world, the light that shines in the darkness (cf. John 1:5).If we have clothed ourselves in Christ, put
on his protective armor against the weapons of the Enemy of our souls, by doing
what Jesus did, speaking as Jesus did—deeds and words of light—then we will, as
the psalm response (Ps 122) says, “go rejoicing to the house of the Lord,” to
our heavenly home.Do you remember the
announcement of John Paul the Great’s death on April 2, 2005, how the cardinal
told the world simply, “Dearest brothers and sisters,
at 9:37 p.m., our beloved Father John Paul II returned to the house of the
Father”?This is what JP II was created
for, and what we also are created for; the house of the Father is the
destination of the earthly pilgrimage that we’re all on.

When we’ve filled our
lives with righteous deeds—when we have our lamps filled with oil, lit and
burning brightly, like the wise virgins of our Lord’s parable in Matt 25, or
like the house owner in today’s mini-parable who should keep vigil against
burglars (Matt 24:43)—then we’ll be ready to greet Christ at his coming, will
run forth to meet him like children who’ve missed their parent for days or
weeks away—even if Christ comes “at an hour you do not expect” (24:44); for we
have no guarantee we’ll be warned of the coming of the end:“of that day and hour no one knows … but the
Father alone” (24:36), Jesus says in the verse that immediately precedes the
gospel passage we read this evening/morning.

The “resolve” we pray for
touches on these “righteous deeds.”How
can a follower of Christ live righteously in this world without resolve?Following Christ, we all know, requires
constant vigilance, resistance to evil, no compromising of principles,
repentance of our failings, renewal of our baptismal (and vocational)
commitment.“I heartily resolve to sin
no more,” we say in the traditional Act of Contrition most of us learned many
years ago.It’s a resolve we need to
renew every day.

Of course, a resolve to
avoid sin and “the near occasions of sin”—or, in the words many of our young
people now use, “whatever leads me to sin”—is only a beginning, rather like a
student resolving to do the bare minimum of schoolwork to avoid an F.As Jesus’ followers, we need to resolve to
imitate him in doing good, in practicing virtue—the “righteous deeds” for which
we’ve prayed in the Collect.

The Collect goes on to
refer to those “gathered at his right hand.”In Mark’s version of Jesus’ words about the Last Day, Jesus says that the
angels will “gather his elect” from the far reaches of the world (Mark
13:27).(One objective of the new
translation of the Missal was to capture more of the biblical allusions in the
prayers, and you have an example of that in this prayer.)

These elect, these
faithful, are “gathered at [Christ’s] right hand.”That’s an allusion to the parable of the
coming of the Son of Man and the last judgment in Matt 25, at which the sheep of
his flock will be placed at his right hand and rewarded for their righteous
deeds of mercy:feeding the hungry,
clothing the naked, visiting the sick and the imprisoned, welcoming strangers—and
the goats placed at his left hand will be condemned to hell for their lack of
merciful deeds.

The final line of the
Collect begs that “they may be worthy
to possess the heavenly kingdom.”Interesting lack of presumption there!We don’t automatically count ourselves among the faithful, among the
elect; we don’t say “we may be
worthy.”It’s a humble prayer for
everyone, and we can only hope (and pray) that our kind and merciful Savior
will include us—but we don’t presume to say so out loud.

What we pray for is more
than mere presence in the kingdom, like being a spectator in the galleries of
Congress.We ask to be worthy of
“possessing” the kingdom.What a difference
from just being there.God has made us
his children, and he has promised us an inheritance alongside his Son, places
of honor in the heavenly kingdom.

May God’s abundant grace
empower us to live righteously so as to look forward eagerly (without anxiety)
for Christ’s coming, so as to be joined with our Savior in the glory of his
kingdom, forever and ever!

“Blessed is he who inherits the
kingdom of David our father” (Alleluia verse).

Today we celebrate Christ as our
king.He is not just David’s heir, not
just King of the Jews as Pilate mocked him.But “he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col 12:17).

What does it mean to be a
monarch? Is it pomp without substance, as when the Queen opens Parliament?Is it public acclaim such as the British
displayed 2 summers ago when Charles and Diana wed?Is it unrestrained power such as the king of Saudi
Arabia is reputed to hold?

These are some of the trappings
and the essence of monarchy as the world sees it.These aren’t what we celebrate when we
proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, that he is our king.

What does it mean, then, for
Christ to be a king?The readings give
us some insight.The first reading
described David’s anointing as king over all Israel, and the Alleluia verse praised
Jesus as David’s son and heir.

Who is this David?In the Jewish mind, he is the ideal king, the
one whom the Messiah – that is, the Christ – will be like.He unites the people.He shepherds the nation. In a real sense, he is the redeemer of Israel.

King David (Our Lady of the Valley, Orange, N.J.)

David unites Israel.“All the tribes of Israel came to David” (2 Sam 5:1).Up to this point, David has ruled over only
the tribe of Judah.The northern tribes have given their
allegiance to Saul’s house.This
division and strife has proven unsatisfactory. So the elders, in effect, stage a coup and
offer David the kingship of the northern tribes too, recognizing his and
Judah’s kinship with them: “we are your bone and flesh.”

They also recognize that David,
the former shepherd boy of Bethlehem, was a leader in all of Israel when Saul
was king.“It was you that led out and
brought in Israel”
(5:2), that is, led the Israelites in raids and battles against the Philistines
and brought them home victorious.The
women used to sing, probably with some exaggeration, that “Saul has slain his
thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Sam 18:7).The elders are choosing a proven military
leader to shepherd the people, to protect them from their enemies.They recognize that God has chosen him for
this special mission.

The king is to be Israel’s
redeemer.To redeem is not only to
ransom or to buy back but to liberate.The king is to free Israel
from oppression, from danger.He is to
be the avenger of the injustice inflicted upon them.All of this David will do by conquering
Israel’s threatening neighbors, the Philistines, the Moabites, the Ammonites,
and the Edomites.He will arrange
alliances with the Arameans and the Phoenicians.Under David,
Israel will
become secure and comfortable.

Jesus, like David, was picked
out by YHWH and anointed – anointed not by the prophet Samuel, like David, nor
by a group of elders, but by the Holy Spirit.Jesus’ anointing by the Holy Spirit, like David’s anointing, made him a messiah, a Christ, one who has been anointed.The Spirit came upon him at the River Jordan, and YHWH’s voice from
heaven proclaimed, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Luke
3:22).

The Baptism of Jesus

(St. Ursula's Church, Mt. Vernon, N.Y. ?)

Jesus has been anointed as the
messiah of YHWH’s people in order to do as David did, but more excellently.Jesus unites the people.He shepherds the nation; he is the redeemer
of Israel.These are his claim to
kingship.

Jesus unites all of us into
God’s people.“He is before all things,
and in him all things hold together….Through
him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in
heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:17,19-20).Jesus unites all of mankind, especially
sinners who can say, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingly power” (Luke
23:42).

Jesus shepherds the nation.All of us who are in Christ (who are anointed
with the Holy Spirit), all of us are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, God’s own people….Once you were
no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now
you have received mercy” (1 Pet 2:9-10), in the words of St. Peter.Like David, Jesus is our shepherd because he
leads us out and brings us in: out into battle against evil, sin, death; back
into eternal life.Jesus is our leader:
“he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead” (Col 1:18), who has overcome for us both sin
and death and makes a covenant of faith with us.

Jesus is the redeemer of Israel:the new Israel washed clean of sin in the
blood of his cross, delivered from the dominion of darkness and into the
inheritance of the saints in light (cf. Col
1:12-13).“In him we have redemption,
that is, the forgiveness of sins” (Col
1:14), the conquest of our enemy.We are
secure and have inner peace because he is protecting us from the ultimate
danger – which is not nuclear holocaust but eternal death.He assures us who bow before his throne that
we will be with him in paradise.

Jesus Christ is our king.He still unites us, shepherds us, redeems
us.He calls us into his one body, which
is the Church. He reconciles us to his Father and to one another by forgiving
our sins and leading us to forgive.He
gives us his sacraments.He nourishes us
with his Word and with the teaching of the Church.He has given his Holy Spirit to dwell in our
hearts.He has destined us to share in
his heavenly kingdom forever and ever.

On the Nov. 11-13 weekend I joined Troop 9, based at our parish, for a camping trip to Prairielands Council's Camp Drake in Vermillion County (east of Champaign County), about 10 miles south of I-74, not far from the village of Oakwood. Just that little distance southward, it was surprising to me to find actual hills (altho we're certainly not talking about Harriman State Park hills).

It was a cold weekend--the temperature dropped below zero both nites, and we woke up with substantial frost on our tents, our chairs left by the fire pit, and elsewhere. Here are pix of supper after our arrival on Friday nite and of Scouts and dads around the campfire.

Fortunately, Saturday was perfectly clear, relatively windless, and cool but not cold--ideal camping weather. We had 20 Scouts with us and 10 adults, at least on Friday nite; the number fluctuated a bit on Saturday with some early departures, late arrivals, and day-trippers.

In addition, the 2d-year Webelos joined us at an adjacent campsite (and stayed Saturday nite).

The activity for Saturday was shooting at the camp's riflery and shotgun ranges--following extensive safety instruction at both the preceding regular troop meeting and on arrival at the range, and accompanied by very close supervision by our trained instructors. The boys shot .22 rifles, and some also did shotguns (aiming at paper targets in the former case, and clay pigeons in the latter). The adults, including your humble blogger, had those opportunities as well as a "shot" (pun intended) at 3 different pistols and 2 military rifles.

Several Scouts made progress on qualifications for the riflery merit badge.

After lunch I went for a 2-hour hike rather than return to the gun ranges. The camp's main trail follows the Salt Fork of the Vermillion River for a couple of miles before looping back toward the center of the camp. I walked about 2/3 of the trail.

(My Sony photography is still marred by a scratch on the lens.)

A somewhat rickety wooden suspension bridge gives hikers access to the west bank of the river. I went halfway over and took some shots up and down the river, and also one of this fellow resting on the bridge rail:

Fall foliage is long past its peak at Camp Drake. The trail was completely covered in brown, crackly leaves, which made silent walking impossible. Toward the end of my hike, the noise alerted a couple of deer to my presence, and they bounded off before I could sight them with my camera.

There were 2 deer somewhere out there, about 100 feet from the trail.

So the tree line looked a lot like this:

And this is what all those tens of thousands of acres of Midwest cornfields look like now:

Back in camp, one of the Scouts and his dad did some Dutch oven cooking for the suppers of the adults and one of the 2 Scout patrols.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

On the Nov. 12-13 weekend,
I was ministering to Boy Scouts and preached to them with a barebones outline—which
I also used at a later parish Mass.From
the archive comes this homily preached when I was a deacon.

Early
in the Shakespearean tragedy Hamlet,
the troubled prince of Denmark is conversing with two friends when a ghost
suddenly appears.The spirit beckons
Hamlet follow it, and Hamlet feels some connection between the specter and his
recently deceased father.Despite their
fearful warnings, the prince leaves his friends and pursues the apparition. All
of which leads one of Hamlet’s companions to mutter a now famous line:
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I, iv. 90).

The
prophet Malachi lets his hearers and us know that something is also rotten in
the state of Israel.“Behold, the day
comes, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be
stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the LORD of hosts…” (4:1).

source unknown

Malachi
is the last of the OT prophets; he preached about 450 years before Christ.In today’s verse and a half, he uses a style
called technically “apocalyptic,” as in the NT book of the Apocalypse.

The
apocalyptic style is a characteristic of times of crisis.When everything seemed to be going wrong,
when the bad guys seemed to be winning, when the saints seemed most oppressed,
Jewish and early Christian writers resorted to a kind of ancient science
fiction to describe colorfully all the terrible evils of the day.But not just the evils.The key point is that the Lord of hosts is
still in charge!He is going to act amid
earth-shaking terrors that destroy the present world:“burning like an oven, leaving neither root
nor branch”—do you see where we get our popular imagery for the end of the
world and the last judgment? The Lord is
going to save those who fear his name, inaugurating a new age in which his
chosen ones are top dogs: “the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in
its rays” (4:2a).

If
Malachi had been an Irishman instead of a Jew, he might have prophesied thus:

God’s plan made a hopeful beginning

But man spoiled his chance by
sinning.

We trust that the story

Will end in God’s glory,

But at present the other side’s
winning.

Well,
what was so lousy about Malachi’s times?From the 3 main chapters of his book, we learn that Jerusalem is plagued
by divorce and dangerous remarriages between Jews and pagans, by a corrupt
priesthood that is ignorant, lax, and greedy, and by social oppression such as
dishonest business tactics and the enslavement of the poor.To those who engage in such sinful
activities, Malachi promises in the Lord’s name swift justice in the day of the
Lord, a day like a burning oven that destroys chaff and purifies gold. The heat
will also bring swift justice to the poor and oppressed; it will be like the
sun: warm, bright, life-giving, healing, and purifying.

Do
Malachi’s words carry meaning today?If
poverty and social oppression, public corruption, and unfaithful family
situations still abound, yes, Malachi speaks to us today.The unfaithful, the corrupt, and the
oppressors he warns: Clean up you act!Cherish your family.Work
honestly and hard.Pay a fair wage.Help your brother: liberate him from discrimination,
unemployment, decaying cities, a polluted environment, and abortion.

The
poor and the oppressed, Malachi encourages.He advises them that the Lord does
care, and he will save them.He doesn’t
tell them to stand around waiting for the Lord. If I may allude to the other 2 readings of
this afternoon, from St. Paul and St. Luke, God’s poor and oppressed are to
work, to make hard choices, to be patient amid confusion (for there are no
instant answers, no simple solutions), and to give testimony to their faith in
the lord even tho they are oppressed on account of his name.

Paschal candle, St. Patrick's Cathedral, NYC

So,
the other side’s winning, and something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.Yet I trust in God’s glory winning out, for
the “other side” is sin, and the rot is the corruption of death.But we have a risen Savior who has conquered
both sin and death.He is symbolized by
the paschal candle always in our sanctuary.[1]He is our Sun of righteousness, and he heals
us.

[1]
“Sanctuary” in a broad sense, i.e., the church building, such as near the
baptismal font.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

“The
King of the world will raise us up to live again forever” (2 Macc 7: 9).

A
Greek kingdom based in Antioch of Syria—now the city of Antakya, Turkey—ruled
the Jewish people from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C., when his
generals divided his empire among themselves, until the Jews revolted against
their Greek masters in the mid-160s B.C.The reason for their rebellion was a vicious religious persecution
initiated under the Greek King Antiochus IV, the villain in the story in our
1st reading this morning/evening.That
persecution and the Jewish fight for freedom under the leadership of Judas
Maccabeus and his brothers are the topics of the 1st and 2d books of Maccabees
in the OT, and it’s the Jewish triumph that’s celebrated annually with the
feast of Hanukkah in December.

The
1st reading consists of just 8 verses out an entire chapter—41
verses—describing the gruesome martyrdom of 7 brothers and their mother on
account of their refusal to violate the Torah, the Law of Moses.As you heard from the words of 2 of the
brothers, they stood firm because they believed in the resurrection of the
dead, in everlasting reward or punishment beyond this life according to how one
has lived in this life, reward or punishment to be experienced in our whole
person, body and soul.

Martyrdom of the 7 Brothers

(source unknown)

So
we see that by the 2d century B.C. many Jews had come to believe in the
resurrection of the dead as God’s ultimate plan for humanity.In our Lord’s time that belief was widespread
but not universal.The Pharisees
embraced the teaching, while the Sadducees, who accepted as sacred Scripture
only the Torah (the 1st 5 books of the OT), did not.Hence the controversy in today’s gospel
reading, and Jesus’ quotation to them precisely from Exodus, the 2d book of the
OT.

Every
Sunday and feast when we renew our profession of faith, we say, “I look forward
to the resurrection of dead and the life of the world to come,” as a
fundamental truth of our Christian faith.

It’s
true that human reason by itself—without divine revelation—may come to the
conclusion that there must be some kind of afterlife, some kind of immortality,
for human beings.If God is just—which
most religions believe he is—and if an awful lot of injustice is never set
right in this world—victims restored to their health or prosperity or
happiness, and the evil punished—then divine justice requires that the balance
be set right in eternity.

In
itself, that philosophical position doesn’t require belief in bodily
resurrection.The Greeks, e.g., believed
that a person’s true self was the soul, the spirit; bodily death was a
liberation.You may recall that when St.
Paul preached the resurrection of Jesus to the wise men of Athens, they laughed
at him (Act 17:22-34).

But
our biblical faith reveals to us that when God created humanity “in his own
image,” he created us as embodied persons.Our selves, who we are, must include our whole being, both body and
soul.A disembodied soul isn’t a whole
person and so can’t be considered a redeemed person.When we profess that Jesus has redeemed us,
we profess that he has redeemed us entirely and fully restored God’s image in
us. Not that God has a body—not until God
the Son took on a human body at the moment of his incarnation, his “enfleshment.”That human flesh has been raised from the
tomb, so that now it does provide for humanity an image of God in the flesh, an
image of what we shall be when, as we
look forward to, we shall be raised from our graves on the Last Day, when Jesus
the King of the world returns in his glory to judge the living and the dead, to
restore the balance of justice for every human being.

The Triumph of Christianity(Gustave Dore')

If
our bodies are destined for resurrection and for the fullness of life with
Christ; if our bodies are part of our being images of God—then we treat our
bodies with utmost respect.That’s why
we bring the bodies of the dead into church for funeral rites, why we honor
them with incense, why we bless the graves into which we’ll inter them.The Holy See has just reminded us of this in
a document published on Oct. 25, called Ad resurgendum cum Christo
(“On Rising with Christ”), which is reported in this week’s Catholic Post.

Presenting
that document to the public, Cardinal Gerhard Müller reminded us:“Caring for the bodies of the deceased, the
Church confirms its faith in the resurrection and separates itself from
attitudes and rites that see in death the definitive obliteration of the
person, a stage in the process of reincarnation, or the fusion of one’s soul
with the universe.”The Vatican
instruction says that the deceased should be buried in a marked grave or the
cremains put into a mausoleum or columbarium marked with the person’s
name.One reporter put out this summary
of one part of the instruction:“Loved
ones belong in a cemetery, not on a coffee table . . . . nor should human
remains be turned into jewelry. People—even dead people—are not pendants. The instruction denies burial rites for those
who ‘requested cremation and the scattering of ashes for reasons contrary to
the Christian faith’ (8).”[1]

Cardinal
Müller explained, “A human cadaver is not trash,” and an anonymous burial or
scattering someone’s ashes “is not compatible with Christian faith.The name, the person, the concrete identity
of the person” is important because God created each individual and calls each
individual by name to himself.

At
the same time, the cardinal also commented, labeling a grave or tomb or urn in
a public place is an expression of belief in the communion of saints, the
unending unity in Christ of all the baptized, both living and dead (which is another
component of our Creed, as you know).

Let
me add that this latest Church document instructs us about what should ordinarily be done with the mortal
remains of our loved ones and fellow believers.It doesn’t discuss exceptional cases like war, natural disasters,
burials at sea, or bodies completely obliterated by some kind of horror like
Hiroshima or the Twin Towers.After the
10 o’clock Mass, I was asked about giving one’s body for medical research.The instruction doesn’t address that
question, but it has long been considered a legitimate, charitable action.A Salesian sister whom I knew did just that
about 10 years ago.I think the
presumption there is that the remains will be respectfully taken care of; e.g.,
after its medical study, sister’s body was returned to the FMAs for burial in
their cemetery.

The
instruction reminds us:“From the earliest times, Christians have desired that the
faithful departed become the objects of the Christian community’s prayers and
remembrance. Their tombs have become places of prayer, remembrance, and
reflection.” (n. 5) The Church
prefers burial or entombment of the faithful (n. 4); cremation is permitted,
provided that the ashes are treated with the same respect as is due the body (n.
5); and that our treatment of the remains of the dead reflects our belief in
our ultimate destiny, which is to rise with Christ and live forever with him,
as he lives bodily and, we Catholics believe, his Virgin Mother also lives,
having been taken up bodily into heaven already in anticipation of the general
resurrection to which the rest of us look forward with eager hope, for then our
redemption by our Lord Jesus will be complete—provided only that, like the 7
brothers and their mother in 2 Maccabees, we have done our best to be faithful
to the God who has called us by name to be his own.

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About Me

Member of Salesians of Don Bosco since 1966. As of July 2016, parish priest in Champaign, Ill., and director of the SDB community there. Priest since 1978. Teaching and administrative experience in Boston, metro N.Y.C. area, New Orleans, and Tampa; since 1986 stationed mainly at SDB provincial HQ as editor, general manager of book publishing, and PR officer. Boy Scout chaplain since 1995.